


in sickness and,

by dearcaspian



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M, Short One Shot, Sickfic, hinnah is an awful patient, made up diseases, the author is actually sick so of course must write coping fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 10:01:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16700356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearcaspian/pseuds/dearcaspian
Summary: In which the Inquisitor is ill, and Dorian feels a little less sympathy for him than he probably should.





	in sickness and,

**Author's Note:**

> Featuring an appearance of Arahiel Lavellan, who belongs to the wonderful LittleAprilFlowers!

“It's not funny.”

Arahiel throws his head back and laughs. In the secluded staircase leading up to the Herald’s quarters, the noise bounces off the high ceilings and back down like an entire chorus of cheerful mockery. Dorian hefts the rolled blanket higher on his hip and waits until the elf’s mirth subsides.

“It’s a little funny,” he replies, wiping at his eyes. He grins, tone a little kinder in the face of Dorian’s displeasure. “If only because I have been where you are now, and I don’t envy you.”

A heavy sigh chases Arahiel’s fading amusement. Dorian gestures flatly at the door above them both, just out of sight around the corner.

“I’d say he’s nearly impossible if he wasn’t so…”

“Pitiful?” Arahiel supplies, raising a brow.

“Yes!”

Leaning on the railing, Arahiel crosses his arms. “That’s how he gets you,” he tells him with a furtive wink. “If it helps, I don’t think he’s doing it on purpose.”

The hazy winter sun had just begun it’s trek through the highest point in the sky and Dorian already considered himself drained. Great leaders and the figureheads of religious cults were not supposed to get sick. No one ever heard in legends of old about the singular week between battles in which the titled famed warrior spent curled up in bed with a high fever, subsisting solely off soup. Perhaps those passages were committed by those who wrote said legends to save face. Likelier so, those heroes died shortly afterwards not from a lacerating sword wound at the zenith of the last fight, but from their caretakers who murdered them in their sleep.

“Has he always been like this?” Dorian asks, pushing a hand through his mussed hair.

“As far back as I can recall. Even as a child he was insufferable when ill. He rarely _is_ ill, which makes up for it, I suppose.”

“It doesn’t.” Dorian looks up the staircase. “How much could I entice you with to take my place?”

“I love him, but I would not trade for all the gold in the Magisterium. Besides,” he continues on, “I have to attend Lord Yileaux’s banquet tonight.”

“A mere representation for the absence of our poor Herald, or…?”

Arahiel’s smile turns mischievous. “We decided pure impersonation would go over better.”

Even Dorian in his self imposed apprehension for what awaited him up the stairs could not hold back a short laugh. “I take it this is what he asked to see you about?”

“It should be simple enough. Our visiting Lord has no idea what Mahinnah actually looks like.”

“I eagerly await tales of this disaster,” Dorian drawls. “Please do paint me in the most stunning of lights, if I’m asked about.”

Arahiel waves him off, already moving down the staircase. “But of course. And go easy on our friend up there. He thinks he’s dying.”

“So he’s told me,” Dorian grumbles once the Inquisitor vanishes into Skyhold’s main hall, and grips the blanket tighter as he enters the room.

Once inside, he takes care to tread lightly. The defining feature of the spacious quarters instantly attracts his eye: not the collection of nick knacks, or the view from the balcony, or the roaring fire in the corner, but the mound of sheets and assorted quilts neatly obscuring the limp figure beneath them from view. Dorian approaches the bed, quietly unfurling the blanket he has brought with him. He lays it atop the rest. The mound stirs.

“Dorian?”

His name is but a wheeze in Mahinnah’s mouth. Dorian sits gingerly on one side of the mattress, peeling back layers until a tousled head emerges. Pitiful indeed, he thinks, sympathy swelling. Imagine if Corypheus could see the terror of his demon armies like this.

“Any better?” Dorian asks softly. He smooths back damp wayward locks from the other’s forehead. Mahinnah had not moved from the same position all day. Curled into himself, he looks impossibly small under Dorian’s troubled inspection. All his prior reluctance at rejoining him seems to melt away at the sight.

“No.” He does not open his eyes. “Thank you for the blanket.”

“You’re quite welcome. Still cold?”

“‘M freezing.”

“A shirt might help to remedy that,” Dorian says, but the response, somewhere between a huff and a marvelously undignified collection of words that might have been _ugh, no_ , cuts right through his recommendation.

“Or not.” Pleasantly entertained and only slightly guilty for it, Dorian leans closer. Mahinnah was too warm to the touch despite his complaints of being chilled.

“Is there anything else you need?”

A pale hand struggles out of the swath of blankets and finds his own, gripping it loosely. “Stay?”

“Hmm.” He takes the hand in his, surprised at how icy it was compared to the rest of him. “What if I get sick, too? You’ve already subjected Arahiel to the likelihood of catching whatever ails you.”

“No, no,” Mahinnah grumbles weakly. “Ari’s had it before. You’re safe from it, by default.”

As soon as he says this, he appears to realize some fleeting mistake. Eyes fly open and search around blearily, all the usual vigor emptied from their light. Dorian watches, intrigued, as the points of his ears redden, a sure sign of a blush on the rise, and before Mahinnah can even think of a protest Dorian says, “You absolutely _must_ tell me what you mean by that.”

“No.” Mahinnah shifts, tries to turn over, and gives up after a moment’s helpless wriggling. The useless effort is adorable and Dorian knows he’ll be killed if he ever mentions it.

“Hinnah,” he attempts, gentle and prodding.

“No. Let a dying man have his last wish.”

He bites back a chuckle as he leans further over. “You aren’t dying, my dear.”

“Feels like it.”

A minute passes in which Dorian waits patiently. Eventually Hinnah sighs, won over by his exhaustion.

“Fine,” he mumbles. “I don’t know how to properly describe it outside of elven terms, however.”

Dorian hums thoughtfully. “Can you think of anything to compare it to?”

Mahinnah coughs, a hard, grating sound. “Oh, what do you humans call it,” he whispers irritably. “Druffalo pox?”

“Do you mean,” Dorian begins incredulously, “to tell me that you’re suffering from the elvhen version of druffalo pox?”

“It’s not-” But Dorian’s unfiltered delight at this revelation has already overtaken him.

“Druffalo pox!” he exclaims, grinning sympathetically in the meager force of Mahinnah’s glare. “Isn’t that typically a disease associated with adolescence?”

“Typically,” Mahinnah states, frowning. “I never had this as a child.”

“Amatus, this is incredible.”

“It isn’t.”

“I beg to differ.”

“You cannot tell anyone about it.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

He coughs again, withdrawing back into the nest of blankets when a fit of shivering overtakes him. Dorian starts to undo the straps on his boots and kicks them off to the side of the bed.

“If I am in no danger,” he teases, “then I suppose I can stay.”

“I hope you get sick anyways."

Outerwear shed, Dorian climbs beneath the covers. Mahinnah’s skin feels like a fire as he draws him close. He shudders in Dorian’s arms, pressing his head beneath the mage’s chin, latching onto him as though he would drown if he let go.

“You’ll be fine,” Dorian promises. “You just need to rest.”

Hinnah says something so wordless into his neck it may as well have been in another language.

“I’ll take that as a thank you.”

“It was I love you, actually,” he mutters. “And I have a request.”

“Oh? Anything.”

“When this kills me, will you make sure I’m buried somewhere in the Dirth.”

“Yes, Hinnah.” Dorian smiles into his hair. “Now go to sleep.”

 


End file.
